Behind the scenes at Naim Audio

Naim Audio has been one the UK's blue ribbon hi-fi brands for
the best part of thirty-five years. With a reputation for
immaculate engineering and world-leading fidelity, it's developed a
loyal user base across the globe. The brand's latest signature
product is the Ovator S-800 loudspeaker. This 93.5kg tower
represents the culmination of five years of research into the
brand's proprietary Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR) technology. Priced
at £27,500 a pair, it's not so much a loudspeaker as a musical
milestone.

The Ovator S-800 has just made its debut at this summer's Hong
Kong High-End AV show. However, Inside CI enjoyed a rather
less glamorous reveal some time earlier, when we exclusively
visited Naim's Salisbury base for an in-depth factory tour.

As we made our way through a stock room full of speakers, we
spied some enclosures much larger than the rest, covered with a
drape. Our guide, Naim Customer Service Manager Steve Hopkins,
winced when we pointed them out. "Oh, you weren't meant to
have seen them," he said. "They don't exist - yet." He paused, then
unable to resist, pulled back the cover just enough. The Ovator
S-800 stood revealed for the first time.

Of course, a good deal more work was required before any
official launch. "It's a bit like Formula 1 engineering," said
Hopkins. "Someone has an idea, then we develop it - but the last
and most important part of the process is all the tweaking. That's
where you get the last drop of performance out of a product. When
we perfect a design we religiously follow it. It's a bit fanatical,
but if it makes a difference, you have to do it. Everyone pays
attention to detail - we just take it to a higher level."

Naim speakers have had a reputable for being challenging to set
up, but that seems to changing. "Our S-400 and S-600 Ovator lines
are much easier to set up'" said Hopkins. "When you listen to them
they're surprising, they're not difficult to drive at all. Even a
Naim Uniti all-in-one can drive them."

The history of Naim Audio
When visiting the factory, it's clear the Naim team is a tight
knit bunch. Managing Director Paul Stephenson has been with the
company for more than 30 years. "A large percentage of people have
been here for over ten years," he told us. "The staff churn is very
low. We're like a family" The brand also wears its company history
on its sleeve. You don't need to look far to see vintage photos
from Naim's early days, many featuring the brand's founder Julian
Vereker; classic advertising images dot the walls.

There are also multiple listening rooms around the facility,
some large, others small. The service department has its own
listening room, R&D has another, and then there's the
fully-furnished audition room. Occasionally dealers are brought in
for training, although typically Naim reps train as they travel
around the country. "The sales guys actually spend far more of
their time on support and training, than they ever do on selling,"
we're told.

Electronics go through four stages of testing before they're
released from the factory. "What we do here is test, test and
test," said Steven Hopkins. "Kit typically goes wrong during the
first week of its life, so we try and make sure it has that first
week in here. So a PCB will be assembled then tested, have
components added and then tested again; finally it's soaked tested,
and then auditioned before shipment for good measure." Apparently
if you purchase a flagship product, Naim Technical Director Roy
George gives it a final once over before its green lit for
shipping.

And it seems you buy a Naim product for life not just for
Christmas. "If you bought a NAP 250 amplifier from us more than
twenty years ago, you can still send that back, spend around £400
and get new capacitors and various other things, and it'll be
returned sounding as good as new. It'll easily last another ten to
15 years. For consumers, that's a very affordable way to enjoy
high-end hi-fi." That's a pretty low running cost per year, said
Hopkins.

"When stuff comes in for a service the majority is in really
good nick. When people send in their pride and joy you have to be
very careful, so we take a picture of it, listing any scuffs or
marks before we begin work."

The brand also makes a virtue of its lookalike aesthetics.
"We've heard plenty of anecdotal evidence that some guys will wait
until their wives aren't around, then take an old pre-amp to a
dealer and part exchange it for the next one up in the range. It
goes in the rack and looks exactly the same. Everyone is happy"

Naim network audio
Of late, Naim has pushed hard into the world of networked audio
with its NDX and NDS music players. Backing this up is a massive
amount of software engineering. Technical Project Manager Trevor
Wilson explains that his R&D team is actually split across
continents. "We keep the team together by email, phones, Dropbox -
it holds together pretty nicely I think and allows us to attract
better brains."

When Inside CI visited the only other person on site
was the brand's iOS software developer. The team actually consists
of four permanent people and around 20 contract staff. "We have
people working in Germany, Vienna, Slovakia, Cambridge, Texas,
Utah, Salt Lake City…."

"The biggest problem with the arrangement is making sure
everyone has the same hardware," said Wilson. "When new hardware
has been released, within 4-5 days everyone gets it. And if they
need to physically come in to the office to solve a problem, they
come in."

Of course, developing streaming audio gear brings its own unique
challenges. "We have every file type and format, every bit-depth;
FLAC files with a big image, small image, no image, broken images,
bad text data, and deliberately damaged files. We go through all
these variants with ever new release to make sure we're not
tripping ourselves up. We found a good one a few days ago,
which was a music track that locked. It turned out to be a
FLAC file which a customer had renamed as a WAV file, so now that's
in the library. We ensure our play reads the file itself not the
description."

But equally there are benefits to networked audio when things go
wrong. "We recently had a customer in Spain who was pulling his
hair out with a problem," recalled Wilson. "We logged in remotely
and sorted it out for him within a couple of hours. He was ecstatic
that he didn't have to ship his gear back to us."

Doug Graham, International Sales Manager, notes that for many
hi-fi enthusiasts, the ritual of using hi-fi is part of the
enjoyment. "You don't press a button on the fridge to get the milk
out. It's the same as putting a puck on a CD when you play,
something we introduced. You want the experience; a connection with
the media. It's the same with vinyl. Enthusiasts like to engage
with their media.

So is that going to be lost as people migrate away from physical
products? Graham doesn't think so. Engagement will come via apps.
"They're so intuitive. Being able to view album art on tablets is
actually a good thing. When we moved from vinyl to CD, that
appreciation of the art was lost for a lot of us. The point size
was so small on CDs that you just couldn't read it. Now, by using a
tablet and apps, you get that back," he said.

"What's more, if you have a collection of several thousand CDs
you can't possible work your way through it. Put them on a NAS and
then listen via random play and you'll hear songs you love but
haven't heard for years. There will be happy accidents when to
tracks played one after the other just work. It's a really exciting
way to rediscover your music collection."